Lovely, can’t wait to read what you make of it!
Famicom game catalogues 2 and 3 landed today, picked up five new titles for the shelf:
- Dragon Buster
- Mappy
- Kai no Bouken
- Metro Cross
- Tower of Babel
I’ve only played Mappy and Dragon Buster before, and those were the arcade versions. I’m hoping Dragon Buster on Famicom is remixed in some way similar to Dragon Spirit, while Mappy is a faithful conversion.
Never played the others, consider me intrigued…
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Kai no Boken is a prequel to Tower of Druaga, except this time its a brutally difficult 2d side scrolling find the key to the exit style game. Its one of the most challenging Famicom games, and at times very frustrating, but its one I keep coming back to over and over again, I really enjoy the difficulty of it. Anxious to hear what your impressions are.
The Kai no Boken episode of Game Center CX is also my favorite episode, watching Arino struggle through the game echoes all our frustrations playing it. The struggle is real.
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Looking forward to getting destroyed! And I’ve just made a note to check out the Game Center CX episode, cheers!
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Played some of the games today. Initial impressions:
Mappy: I love Mappy, and the Famicom version felt faithful enough that I ordered a Famicom Mini copy just to have it on the Game Boy Micro! Still can’t master those bonus stages though, always get distracted by the smaller balloons!
Metro Cross: Addictive hard as nails racing platform game, I can’t make it past round 6…
Dragon Buster: Definitely re-balanced from the arcade version, game must have been ahead of its time despite the iffy execution. Even the zombie enemies evoke the same threat as the redeads in 3D Zelda, but the items and world map impress.
Kai no Bouken: This game is great, the physics programming is spot-on and I love how the character designs and audio evoke Tower of Druaga. It hasn’t felt unfair -yet- but I can see it coming in the later levels. I’m hoping gaining familiarity with the controls will help in the long-run.
I love the style of Metro Cross but yeah it’s criminally difficult. It’s like Excite Bike but not as approachable.
That’s a good comparison, never thought of it like that.
Also for some reason it’s reminding me of Fall Guys, If I was running Namco I’d bring it back as some sort of free for all racer.
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I finished Kai no Bouken! I went through each floor until 52, where there I used a warp to 59 (the final level).
What really surprised me was how much I enjoyed practically second playing it, while it is indeed a very challenging game the level design gives you plenty of room to stop, think, and experiment, since enemies tend to stay in their predetermined zones, and the game does a good job choreographing attacks and moving projectiles. I only remembered one instance of a leap of faith in the entire sixty main stages! I almost wish the game didn’t remove enemies from levels if you die from them!
Floor 49 was probably the hardest, mainly because you had to have very good timing and restraint with the jump button. It took me dozens of tries to be consistent enough to not either walk into the spikes or jump into the fireballs:
The special stages are great fun so far, and don’t mess around, introducing traps like spikes from the beginning. And there have been some neat variables like wind resistance. Pac-Man’s Inky and Mappy’s Goro have already made cameo appearances three floors in!
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